


Never Let Me Go

by unlockedlips



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Fluff, M/M, and happy, don't read this if you want to feel good, it's cute, that's all this is folks, until it's not, with a really sad ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 18:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20765273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unlockedlips/pseuds/unlockedlips
Summary: They had a life together. They shared decades together, built on the foundation of their love and furnished with once in a lifetime experiences. He had lost Eddie when he left Derry as a cocky teenager and had almost lost him again to the monster that haunted them all. Like hell would he risk doing it for a third time.





	Never Let Me Go

_And it's over_  
_Never let me go, Never let me go_  
_And I'm going under_  
_Never let me go, Never let me go_  
_But I'm not giving up_  
_Never let me go, Never let me go_  
_I'm just giving in_  
_Never let me go, Never let me go_

They had a life together. They shared decades together, built on the foundation of their love and furnished with once in a lifetime experiences. 

Eddie rid himself of his old wounds by divorcing Myra, and yeah, it was nasty. She took him for all he was worth, skinned him down to the bone. But Richie was right next to him every step of the way, even on the nights where Eddie shook and cried and confessed the abuse he had faced by the hands of the women in his life. Those stories were always more horrible than any version of It they had faced. The controlling, the manipulation, the medical abuse all masked by their love of a man who knew no better. So Richie stayed. He made Eddie laugh when before he had cried. He made the lines of tension in his face smooth into gentle laugh lines, and hands that were used to being balled into angry fists turned into the gentle touch of a lover. Richie was happy to do it. He had promised to never leave Eddie, never again, not after they had miraculously made it out of the sewers bruised and broken. 

He had lost Eddie when he left Derry as a cocky teenager and had almost lost him again to the monster that haunted them all. Like hell would he risk doing it for a third time.

After a while, they left the east coast and traveled to L.A. It seemed right to start a new life there. Bill convinced them to buy an apartment, even landed Richie a new job to showcase his original material, and Eddie? He quit his insurance gig and went back to medical school. Creating this new life together wasn’t always easy. There were plenty of fights, of bickering that went too far, and nights spent sleeping on the opposite side of the bed, but they were happy. They were exactly where they wanted to be.

Ben and Beverly got married on a sandy California beach. They wanted a destination wedding, some place shrouded with palm fronds and turquoise waves, but decided against it when Eddie couldn’t take time off from his medical residency to come. The wedding was beautiful in a way that pulled at Richie’s heartstrings. He never liked weddings or the concept of marriage. It seemed like an unnecessary legality, but when Ben lifted Beverly’s veil and they looked at each other bathed in the orange glow of the sunset, Richie suddenly understood the appeal. That night after one too many rum and cokes shoved into his hand by Mike, Richie stumbled down to one knee and proposed to Eddie with nothing more than a twist tie he found buried in the sand and a hopeful smile.

They had a courthouse wedding. Nothing fancy, just the losers and Richie’s parents cramped together as they exchanged their vows. Eddie had everyone rolling so hard that the ecstatic sounds of their laughter bounced out of the room and echoed down the hall, filling the whole building. Stories of their childhood, of every stupid thing Richie had ever done to win his golden boy’s heart. But when Richie cleared his throat to start his vows? No one laughed. Instead they crept in closer as he pulled out a crumpled sheet of notebook paper with his disjointed handwriting scribbled across to listen to the way his tremulous voice painted a story of their love. By the time his shaking hands lowered the paper from his face, there wasn’t a dry eye among them, and Eddie, unprovoked, grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket to kiss him. They partied long and hard, drinking their fill and celebrating their friendship until the sun rose that morning, and when Eddie grabbed Richie and pushed him down onto their bed to press their bodies together, Richie knew there would never be a happier moment in his life.

He was wrong.

A couple of years later, his career took off. He got that Netflix special and then another. He started to host award ceremonies and costar in blockbusters that took him away from home for months at a time. But Eddie was always waiting for him when he came back. One day, Richie came back to Eddie sitting on the couch with a plethora of brightly colored brochures spread across the coffee table with titles like, “How to Adopt.”

A year later they went to pick up their baby girl from the hospital. It was love at first sight, Richie thought as he watched Eddie cradle this tiny bundle of life to his chest and coo down at her. She was beautiful and terrifying. Suddenly two men with more scars than one should bear were in charge of raising a child.

They did their best. They did everything they could for her and surrounded her with the love none of them received growing up. Her aunt and uncles spoiled her rotten and joined them on extravagant family vacations and together they filled up photo album upon photo album with smiles frozen in time.

Years later, they retired together. Old and crochety, they still walked hand in hand to the corner coffee shop every morning so Eddie could get his soy latte and Richie could bitch about the alarming increase of milk substitutes the coffee industry was producing. They shared a life together that more than made up for the twenty seven years they lost. They shared a life without regret, without shame, without fear.

_Richie wakes with a sudden gasp to see Eddie looming over him with wide eyes as his lips move frantically. He thinks he knows this scene, he thinks he’s seen it before. The gauze on Eddie’s cheek, the pride in his eyes, the damp air smelling of rot that clings to his skin. There’s a sudden noise, sickening and loud, of flesh tearing and bones cracking as Eddie is impaled. Blood pours and Richie chokes._

_When Beverly stared into the deadlights, she watched them all die, but when Richie stared into them, he saw a cruel joke, a ghost of the life he could have had with the only person he ever wanted to share it with. _

**Author's Note:**

> look.... I would say I'm sorry but I'm not at all. Came up with this idea this morning and literally gasped in pain so you know I had to write it. Tell me how much you hate me in the comments?


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